RESEARCH SUMMARY
Current projects in the auditory research laboratory are concerned with auditory development and aging; hair cell transduction; hair cell regeneration; and peripheral neural coding of soung. Laser interferometry is used to examine the development of the middle-ear system and this is related to the overall process of hearing maturation and aging. In vitro stimulation of the sensory hairs on hair cells is used to study the process of transduction with patch clamping, video imaging, and opto-electrical signal processing. We are currently examining the processes that lead to hair-cell damage and destruction and are exploring various interventions to prevent hair-cell injury or accelerate hair-cell repair. Other studies are recording single cell responses in the auditory nerve of the chick to follow the recovery of function after exposure to intense sound. Finally, we are examining discharge patterns in the auditory nerve as related to adaptation, and relating this to synaptic processes at the hair cell.